Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  All the Indian prisoners are here, some 60 in all. They are horrid looking things, and I wish they would send them away … Don’t feel anxious about us. I am only anxious for the Doctor. Write soon. Lots of love to all.

  Your affectionate daughter,

  E.L.F.

  BY TELEGRAPH

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  The Strike Virtually but not Actually Ended.

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  Chicago and St. Louis Quiet.

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  Late Washington and Indian Intelligence.

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  MONTANA.

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  Looking Glass Marching On.

  DEER LODGE, July 30.—Governor Potts returned from Missoula this morning. On Saturday Looking Glass, with three hundred Indians and squaws and some Palouses, passed up a fork around Deep Bitter Root. Some settlers have been in the Indian camp and the Indians assured them that they would pass through the country without destroying property. The citizens therefore did not attempt to fight, and Rawn declined to open fire with his small command of regulars, and there was no pursuit made. On the Governor’s arrival he ordered the volunteers who had gone to Bighole to return, the force being insufficient. There will be a party left in Bighole valley to observe and report the actions of the Indians.

  TWO DAYS BACK, WITH THE FIRST SHRILL ANNOUNCEMENT that the Nez Perce caravan was coming their way, Henry Buck ran outside and clambered up on the old fort’s fifteen-foot-high sod wall and watched to the west in the direction of the Bitterroot Mountains as the vanguard of the Non-Treaty bands hoved into sight on the flat of the river, just opposite the town of Stevensville. He thought to look down at his pocket watch, making a mental note of the time that warm summer morning, 30 July. Ten A.M.

  For years now Henry and his two older brothers, Amos and Fred, had owned and operated the Buck Brothers’ General Store in the thriving settlement of Stevensville, several miles south of Missoula City. When the alarm first came that the warrior bands were turning away from McClain’s place near the mouth of Lolo Creek, headed their way, panic spread like a prairie fire igniting the Bitterroot valley. Most everyone up and down the river, Henry included, had herded their families into old Fort Owen,* a long-abandoned fur-trading post erected more than twenty years earlier north of the little town—often used in the past as a bastion of safety during raids by the once-troublesome Blackfeet. More recently, the walls had been patched up by valley citizens, who now renamed the place Fort Brave because of the courage its high walls gave those who flocked within its protection during this current Indian scare.

  After decades of weathering, the two-foot-thick walls were generally in good shape, except for sections on the north and west walls where the adobe was crumbling. At one time there had been four square bastions, complete with rifle ports, but now there were only two, both at corners of the south wall. As soon as the first alarm was raised weeks ago, the local citizenry promptly went about cutting green sod and repairing the gaps in the aging walls. Benjamin F. Potts’s territorial government had seen to it the settlers were armed with a few weapons: obsolete Civil War-vintage muzzleloaders.

  Three miles southwest of the fort where more than 260 people had taken refuge when their men marched off to aid Rawn’s outmanned soldiers—almost within sight of the sod walls—the Nez Perce went into camp for the night on Silverthorne Creek. Within hailing distance of Chariot’s home.

  After tossing around how peaceful the Indians appeared to be, Henry and his brothers decided to reload the trade goods in a pair of wagons and return to their store in Stevensville. The threat appeared to be over. The Nez Perce were making good on their promise not to make a lick of trouble while passing up the valley.

  Early on the morning of the thirty-first, as the three were restocking their shelves, a handful of Nez Perce women showed up at the doorway to make known their wants through sign and a little halting English. To pay for those desired items, the women made it clear they had government money or gold dust.

  “Henry, you tell them we’d prefer not to sell to ’em,” his older brother Amos instructed from the back of the store.

  A few minutes after the youngest Buck brother had declined to sell anything to those squaws, the women were back at the open doorway—this time with three middle-aged, dour-faced warriors. While two of the men stepped inside the store, their rifles cradled across their arms, to look about the place as if to ascertain just how many white men were about, the third came up to the counter where the three brothers nervously awaited trouble.

  “Women, have gold for trade, you,” he started, his English better than any from the squaws. “Take supplies. Pay gold now.”

  He patted the front of his cloth shirt, then stuffed a hand down the neck of the garment and pulled out three small leather pouches. One of them clanked with coins, while the other two must certainly be filled with dust.

  “We don’t want no trouble,” Fred, the eldest Buck, declared confidently. “But you go take your business somewheres else.”

  The warrior measured him for a moment without a change coming over his stoic countenance; then the Indian gazed around the store shelves stocked with goods and said, “We need supplies. Supplies for our trail journey. You have supplies. We have gold. Trade now. If you don’t let us buy supplies … we take what we need. You decide. Want our gold? Or you want us to take supplies for no gold?”

  When the warriors put it that way, the Buck brothers felt they had little choice but to open up a limited trade with the migrating bands. The afternoon the Nez Perce arrived, small-time merchant Jerry Fahy had loaded up a creaky wagon with some sacks of flour and a few other items and rumbled across the river to do a brisk business with the Non-Treaty bands. Flour turned out to be the one item the women wanted most. Shame of it was, the Buck brothers had none on hand at the time. By the next morning the Indians had repaired to a mill near Fort Owen where they traded for all the flour they wanted.

  Although Henry and his brothers decided they would trade for cloth and other staples, they steadfastly refused to barter away any powder or ammunition. Word spread quickly among the Non-Treaties, and by that afternoon the Nez Perce were showing up at the store from their nearby camp in clusters of eager shoppers. Still, it wasn’t until the morning of 1 August when things got scary, as more than a hundred-fifteen warriors rode into Stevensville together under the leadership of the aging White Bird, all of them bristling with weapons. Henry rushed to the front of the store with his brothers to watch their colorful, noisy arrival. Even though they had spent those anxious minutes passing through the village coming back to Stevensville the night after the Lolo fiasco, Buck doubted he would ever forget the sight of so many fierce young warriors clotting the town’s main street.

  Wouldn’t be able to ever forget their formidable appearance, their stern looks, their sheer swaggering aggressiveness and brazen actions—which all together put the white shopkeepers in town immediately on their guard. Riding their finest ponies—some of which wore the brands of their white Idaho ranchers—wearing their brightest blankets and showiest buckskins encrusted with beads and quillwork, all of the warriors strutted around with Henry repeating rifles or soldier carbines. In every store they entered, it was clear they had more than enough money to make their purchases as they shuffled through the few shops open that day in Stevensville.

  While they came and went from the Buck Brothers’ Store, Henry found the men an open and talkative bunch—willing, if not eager, to tell about their tribulations back in Idaho, what tragic events and wrongs had led up to the outbreak on the Salmon River, explaining in honest but graphic terms what depredations and murders they themselves had committed against innocent civilians before the army rode against them in White Bird Canyon. And most all of them spoke in bright and upbeat tones of their current condition, even disclosing where they were headed to make a new life for themselves now that they had left Cut-Off Arm and his army back in Idaho.

  From time to time, old White Bird would yell something
at one warrior or another from the middle of the street, where the chief maintained a wary vigil atop his pony. But his instructions were always in their native tongue, so it remained a mystery to Henry. White Bird and other older warriors were on guard and at the ready, keeping a watchful eye on some two dozen of Chariot’s friendly Flathead, who had slipped into town once word was spread that the Nez Perce had shown up in great numbers. Their chief had ordered them into Stevensville to protect the tribe’s white friends from the noisy, bellicose invaders.

  Early that Wednesday afternoon, another merchant in town came huffing in the door, announcing that an unscrupulous trader down the street had opened up a whiskey keg and was selling it for a dollar a cup in gold dust or coin.

  “Already there’s a few of ’em getting real mean-faced and growling like dogs down at Jerry Fahy’s place,” the man explained to the Buck brothers.

  “Fahy can’t sell that whiskey to these here Injuns!” yelped Amos. “Henry, you go with him and put a stop to this. Hammer a bung back in that keg and make Fahy see the light!”

  By the time young Henry had unknotted the apron from his waist and was stepping out the door, five more citizens were scurrying across the street, streaming right past White Bird himself. On the boardwalk a few yards to the north, about a dozen young warriors were clearly enjoying themselves, weaving side to side and lurching back and forth across the dusty street.

  “Henry!” cried Reverend W. T. Flowers, the local Methodist minister, as his group of concerned citizens lumbered to a halt like a flock of chicks around a black-feathered hen. “You know the bartender down at the saloon?”

  “Dave Spooner?”

  “That’s him,” the preacher said. “We’ve just convinced Brother Spooner how wise he would be to cease selling bilious spirits to the redskins.”

  Henry asked, “Or?”

  “Or he might feel the coarse rub of a hemp rope tighten around his neck!” Flowers warned, pantomiming with both hands clasped at his throat. “Now I’ve heard Fahy is doing a land-office business with a keg of his own. You’re coming with us to see an end is made of that liquid evil?”

  “I am, Reverend.”

  Stomping right down the middle of the street, the six of them crammed through Jerry Fahy’s open doorway and demanded his whiskey barrel be turned over to them. Inches away, more than a dozen warriors stood in line clutching newly purchased pint tin cups, impatiently waiting their turn at the spigot.

  “Why you want my whiskey?” Fahy demanded from behind the counter where he was dispensing the potent amber liquid.

  “We’re acting before any of these Injuns gets drunk and ready to raise some hair!” the gray-headed minister thundered, sweeping back the long tails of his black wool morning coat.

  “You ain’t got a leg to stand on, Reverend,” the merchant chimed back with a gritty smile. “Begging God’s pardon, but I’m just a shopkeeper doing an honest day’s business, and I ain’t breaking no Sabbath…. So I don’t reckon it’s a damn lick of your business.”

  “For sure it’s my business, too,” added one of the other merchants.

  Fahy snorted, “By what authority do you fellas think you can come an’ take my whiskey?”

  Quick as a blink, Preacher Flowers yanked out a single-action army Colt .45-caliber revolver and immediately dragged back the hammer with a click made loud in the sudden silence of that room. Without the slightest hesitation, he shoved the muzzle against the whiskey seller’s forehead, pressing it to that spot just above and between the eyes.

  The right reverend announced gravely, “By this authority!”

  “W-what you gonna do with my whiskey, if I give it to you?” Fahy asked, his eyes crossing each time he stared up at the long barrel. “You gonna pay me for it?”

  “Not on your life,” Flowers sneered. “We’re gonna take your keg of evil concoction to Fort Owen for safekeeping until these Indians have departed from our valley.”

  “You’re stealing my business from me!” Fahy squawked.

  That’s when an emboldened Henry Buck spoke up: “We could just knock a hole in that keg right here, ’stead of keeping it safe for you out at the fort.”

  “Take it, goddammit!” the merchant spit, unrepentant and taking the Lord’s name in vain even before the fire-and-brimstone preacher. “Maybe one of these days the Nez Perce will come to pay a call on you and take what they want without payin’!”

  “We’re not stealing your whiskey,” Henry said as the resealed keg was rolled out the door to a waiting wagon. “We’re just borrowing it until this trouble all blows over.”

  When one of the concerned merchants and the reverend were on their way out to the fort with the trader’s keg in the rear of a prairie wagon, Henry started back for the Buck Brothers’ Store-—only to find even more of the drunken warriors congregating in the street, their voices growing loud enough to wake up the dead. He had to zigzag to make his way across the rutted street, then shove past several inebriated Nez Perce clustered just outside the store’s open doors. Henry stepped inside just as his two older brothers reached out from either side of the door and hoisted him toward a rack of hemp rope.

  “Get in here so we can lock up!” Amos ordered.

  “We’re closing?” Henry asked his brothers.

  “You see’d it yourself out there,” Fred, the eldest, explained. “Better off not dealing with ’em while so many’s got a snootful of that whiskey.”

  Henry proposed, “Maybe we’ll wait till the whiskey wears off, then we can open up again—”

  His voice dropped off just as he caught a flash of motion out the front window. One of the belligerent warriors he had pushed past at the doorway was dragging his wobbly rifle up, pointing it right through the large plate-glass window at Henry, beginning to clumsily drag back the hammer on his weapon.

  In a blur of color, one of the Flathead suddenly rushed in from the right, his arm sweeping up, shoving the rifle away from its mark, wrenching the weapon from the Nez Perce.

  At least ten of the warrior’s friends immediately descended on the scene, along with a half-dozen of Chariot’s Flathead. All appeared destined to die in a hail of angry gunfire … when White Bird appeared out of nowhere, still mounted on his pony, swinging his elkhorn quirt. Whipping his tribesmen with the long knotted rawhide straps, the chief drove his warriors back.

  In a heartbeat the old chief dropped to the street, lunging at the youngster who had prepared to fire at Henry Buck. White Bird cocked his arm into the air. Eight, nine, ten times he savagely lashed the quirt across the offender’s face and shoulders, back and arms, raising angry red welts wherever it landed, while the warrior pitifully cried out for his friends to pull the old man off.

  When the youngster finally collapsed against the storefront, shielding his face behind a pair of bleeding forearms, White Bird ceased his furious attack, took a step back, and dropped his arm to his side. Then he called out in a loud, sure voice.

  Two of the older men pushed their way through the cordon of young warriors, grabbed the offender by his wounded arms, and heaved him onto a nearby pony. Bellowing like a bull, White Bird motioned them in the direction of their camp.

  Once the two guards were on the way with their young prisoner, the old chief turned to the rest of the drunken crowd, berating them, waving his quirt in the air threateningly.

  As his brothers shoved the bolt through its lock on the double doors, Henry watched the old chief disperse the drunken rowdies and young troublemakers, driving them off toward their ponies.

  Only as the noise died down and the hard-eyed, sullen young men drifted away from the front of the store and out of town* did Henry realize he was trembling like a leaf in a spring gale. Listening to his heart pound in his ears. Remembering how that whiskeyed-up warrior had pointed his rifle at him through the window.

  Henry never wanted to be that close to death again, not for a long, long time.

  *Partly reconstructed, between Highway 93 and the present-day
community of Stevensville in Ravalli County, twenty-seven miles south of Missoula, Montana. John Owen arrived in the valley in 1850, later buying the place from some Jesuit priests who were giving up their missionary work after witnessing nine years of constant warfare between the Flathead and Blackfeet. By the time of the Nez Perce War, Owen had lost his Shoshone wife, Nancy, drunken himself into madness, and been sent back to his family in Pennsylvania, where he slipped into obscurity.

  *The older men managed to evacuate Stevensville about 3:00 p.m., having spent more than three thousand dollars in gold coin, dust, and paper currency. Out at the Silverthorne camp that night, unscrupulous traders arrived with ammunition and powder to sell to the Non-Treaty bands.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  WA-WA-MAI-KHAL, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

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  ILLINOIS.

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  Remains of General Custer at Chicago—Other News Items.

  CHICAGO, July 31.—The remains of General Custer arrived here to-day from Fort Lincoln, and were forwarded at 5:15 p.m. by the Michigan Southern railroad, to West Point, where they will be interred in the receiving vault until the funeral in October. The remains of Colonel Cooke, Lieutenant Reilly, and Dr. DeWolf arrived on the same train …

  IT WAS THOSE MEAN BOYS WHO WERE FOLLOWERS OF OLD Toohoolhoolzote—they were the troublemakers.

  They were the ones lapping up a lot of the whiskey and making bold talk about what they would do if Cut-Off Arm and his soldiers ever caught up. These bad ones wanted to have another big fight with the army, even though most of the people believed the fighting was over now that they were in Montana, now that Looking Glass and White Bird had made a pact with the little chief and Shadows in Lolo Canyon, now that they were on the way to a new life in the buffalo country.

  So when some hot-blooded young men got together and started talking tough with noplace to go where they could prove just how tough they were, Bird Alighting realized those bad-tempered ones were likely to cause some trouble. With no other way to get the fighting steam out of their systems, the mean boys rode away from the Non-Treaty camp,* itching for something that would break the boredom of camping and marching, camping and marching a little farther each day. Bird Alighting knew that bunch was up to no good the moment they thundered out of camp, most of them red to the gills with some whiskey brought into camp on a trader’s wagon come out of Stevensville.